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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Corporate Hijack of Sustainable Agriculture
  • Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 18:42:35 -0700

The Institute of Science in Society Science Society
Sustainability http://www.i-sis.org.uk

General Enquiries sam@i-sis.org.uk Website/Mailing List
press-release@i-sis.org.uk ISIS Director m.w.ho@i-sis.org.uk
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ISIS Press Release 16/11/04

Corporate Hijack of Sustainable Agriculture

*********************************

Editor's Note:

I first heard the term ‘ecoagriculture' used by a Chinese
scientist on Australia's Radio National to describe an
approach combining the best that modern science has to
offer, i.e., genetic modification of plants, with
traditional sustainable agriculture.

A few days later, a motion to promote ecoagriculture
appeared on the agenda of the upcoming 3 rd IUCN (World
Conservation Union) World Conservation Congress in Bangkok,
Thailand, (17-25 November 2004). Angry critics had described
it as “an organic agriculture that is very friendly to
agribusiness”. A protest letter from civil society
participants at a recent ecoagriculture conference organised
by IUCN in Nairobi maintained that, “ecoagriculture is
fundamentally incompatible with food sovereignty” and hence
unacceptable.

Suddenly, it seems, agribusiness is taking over ‘sustainable
agriculture' in a big way. Biotech giants Syngenta (as
Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture) and
BayerCropscience, together with Croplife International, a
global network representing the plant science industry, and
another agribusiness, Sustainable Agriculture Initiative,
have become members of ‘Ecoagriculture Partners', a
consortium that includes 12 non-government organizations -
among them, IUCN, Rainforest Alliance, Stakeholder Forum for
our Common Future and World Association of Soil and Water
Conservation - 9 research and education organisations -
among them, International Centre for Tropical Agriculture,
Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management
Collaborative Research Support Program and M.W. Swaminathan
Foundation - and 4 inter-government organizations, among
which, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

The Ecoagriculture Partners define ‘ecoagriculture' as
“sustainable agriculture and associated natural resource
management systems that embrace and simultaneously enhance
productivity, rural livelihoods, ecosystem services and
biodiversity.”

The ‘Nairobi Declaration', made by participants at the
recent conference in Nairobi, Kenya, similarly, called for
“a framework that seeks to simultaneously achieve improved
livelihoods, conservation of biodiversity (genetic
resources, ecosystem services and wild flora and fauna), and
sustainable production at a landscape scale”; and to ensure

“ that large-scale development and adoption of
ecoagriculture contribute to achieving the Millennium
Development Goals on hunger, poverty alleviation, gender
equality, environmental sustainability and partnerships, and
enhance implementation of global environmental conventions
by all nations.”

Prof. Miguel Altieri at University of California, Berkeley,
in the United States tells us why ecoagriculture is miles
away from the agroecology that can truly deliver food
security and sustainability, alleviate poverty and enhance
biodiversity.



Agroecology versus Ecoagriculture

***************************


Agribusiness is embracing ‘sustainable agriculture' in the
form of ‘ecoagriculture'. Prof. Miguel Altieri explains why
it isn't the genuine approach.

References for this article are posted on ISIS members'
website. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/full/CHSAFull.php

‘Ecoagriculture' short on ecology

*************************

At first glance, no one could fault ‘Ecoagriculture'
(ECOAG): the idea of transforming agricultural systems so
that they support healthy populations of wild species while
simultaneously improving productivity and reducing poverty
is a win-win situation. This seems particularly important in
the biodiversity hotspots of the developing world where most
of the poor live, who often have little choice but to
exploit wild habitats for survival.

Proponents affirm that the best way to reduce the ecological
impact of modernizing agriculture is to intensify production
in order to increase yields per hectare, thereby sparing
natural forests from agricultural expansion. This requires
evaluating the role that emerging technologies may play in
helping meet food needs at a reasonable environmental and
social cost. Although they embrace alternative, low input
agricultural systems, ECOAG practitioners do not forego
chemical-based, high-yielding, intensive agricultural
systems as part of their strategy for protecting wildlife
while feeding the world's population. Their vision is based
on two pervasive assumptions: (a) that alternatives to a
chemically-based crop production system necessarily requires
more land to produce the same amount and (b) that the
adverse ecological and health consequences of industrial
farming are minor in comparison to those that would be
wrought by bringing more land under cultivation. It is well
known that widespread adoption of chemical-based, intensive
crop production systems have major negative impacts on
biodiversity, but less known is the fact that such a
production model actually hinders attempts to provide
adequate food for a growing world population.

The massive increases in production of five major
commodities (soybean, rice, cacao, coffee and oil palm) were
achieved by increasing the area planted as well as the crop
yield per unit area [1]. Both strategies resulted in
environmental degradation and decrease in biodiversity
through loss of natural habitats, but more importantly,
through pollution from the heavy use of agrochemicals. More
than 500 million kg of pesticides are applied annually on
the world's monocultures – 91% of the 1.5 billion hectares
of arable lands are under grain monocultures - to suppress
insect pests, diseases and weeds. The environmental impacts
on wildlife, pollinators, natural enemies, fisheries, etc,
and social costs in human poisonings and illnesses from
pesticide-use reach $8 billion each year in the US alone.
Such costs are much higher in the developing world where
banned pesticides imported from the North are still being
widely used.

Transgenic crops and large-scale plantations: can they
advance the goals of ecoagriculture?

************************************************************
*********

Large-scale plantations and transgenic crops are among the
tools of the Ecoagriculture arsenal to reach the twin goals
of meeting future global food needs and conserving
biodiversity. In their Ecoagriculture book, McNeely and
Scherr [2] provide many examples of interventions that,
according to them, can simultaneously achieve conservation
and food production. They cite a large (3 300 has) Costa
Rican orange plantation that belongs to Del Oro Company, in
which big patches of dry tropical forest are left within or
adjacent to the farm, thereby benefiting biodiversity while
bringing substantial economic gains to the company. It is
difficult to see how a conservation strategy for large
mammals and birds that requires extended territories can be
compatible with an agricultural development agenda for small
farmers who only have small plots of land to grow their
crops. Given that in most parts of the developing world,
poor farmers have little access to productive land, it may
be argued that it is precisely those very large biodiversity
friendly farms such as Del Oro that need to undergo land
reform to reduce social inequities, an important pre-
requisite to launching any meaningful conservation project.
In fact, breaking up large plantations into a patchwork of
thousands of small farms produces the highly heterogeneous
landscapes that are a key to enhancing biodiversity. In
Mexico, half of the humid tropics is utilized by indigenous
communities and ‘ejidos' featuring integrated agroforestry
systems aimed at subsistence and local-regional markets.
Recent research confirms that cacao and coffee-based
agroforestry systems managed with low inputs by smallholders
harbour significant biodiversity, including a substantial
number of species of plants, insects, birds, bats and other
mammals. Biodiversity is highest in the more rustic tree-
diverse and multistrata systems interspersed in a matrix of
tropical forests [3].

There is no scientific basis to arguments in favour of
consolidating land holdings to take advantage of greater
productivity and efficiency, as well as conserving
biodiversity. The opposite may be the case, according to
existing data. Small farms are far more productive than
large farms. In most developing countries, smaller farms
produce more per unit area – by 200 to 1 000 % - than larger
ones. In the US, the smallest farms - 27 acres or less -
have more than ten times greater the dollar output per acre
than larger farms. While in the US this is largely because
smaller farms tend to specialize in high value crops like
vegetables and flowers, it also reflects relatively more
attention devoted to the farm, and more diverse farming
systems [4]. Recent surveys of small-scale coffee producers
in Chiapas, Mexico, reveal an important relationship between
farm size and the technology used in production.
Conventional coffee producers have larger landholdings
averaging 7 hectares, and devote most of their land to
coffee production. As their system uses shade trees, they
conserve some biodiversity but their dependence on external
markets for cash, food and inputs is very high, making such
farmers very vulnerable to the vagaries of an economic
system beyond their control. In contrast, small organic
producers with an average farm size of 4 hectares have the
highest coffee yields, and they devote about 30-50% of their
land to maize and beans for food security, pasture for
animals and part for forest reserve. The heterogeneous
patchy nature of such farming systems contributes
significantly to biodiversity without sacrificing the
farmers' autonomy and food security [5].

Reflecting the views of the Future Harvest Foundation, other
donors and the CGIAR, advocates of ECOAG argue that
biotechnology is biodiversity friendly because engineering
crops for high yields will avoid advancing the agricultural
frontier. This view is a legacy of the Green Revolution,
which assumed that progress and development inevitably
require replacing local crop varieties with improved ones,
thereby disrupting the biodiverse traditional agricultural
patterns, leading to the erosion of landraces and wild
relatives along with indigenous knowledge. It also presumes
that the economic and technological integration of
traditional farming systems into the global system is a
positive step that enables increased production, income and
well-being of the community.

As a new form of industrial agriculture, the rapid spread of
transgenic crops threatens crop diversity by promoting large
monocultures that result in further environmental
simplification and genetic homogeneity. Worldwide, the areas
planted to transgenic crops jumped more than thirty-fold in
the past seven years, from 3 million hectares in 1996 to
nearly 67.7 million hectares in 2003 [6], an unprecedented
move towards increased agricultural uniformity [7],
impacting adversely on the direct benefits of biodiversity
to agriculture in improving nutrient cycling, pest
regulation and productivity. For example, it is known that
the polyphagous natural enemies of insect pests that move
between crops frequently encounter Bt-containing non-target
herbivorous prey in more that one crop during the growing
season. Natural enemies may come in contact more often with
Bt toxins via non-target herbivores, because the toxins do
not bind to receptors on the midgut membrane in the non-
target herbivores [8]. These findings are problematic for
small farmers in developing countries who rely on the rich
complex of predators and parasites associated with their
mixed cropping systems for insect pest control [9].

Recent studies in the United Kingdom [10] showed that in
herbicide resistant crops there was a reduction of weed
biomass, flowering and seeding of plants within and
bordering sugar beet and spring oilseed rape crops, reducing
the abundance of relatively sedentary herbivores including
Heteroptera, butterflies and bees. There were also fewer
birds and predatory carabid beetles that feed on weed seeds
in transgenic fields.

Another key problem with introducing transgenic crops into
biodiverse regions is that the spread of transgenes to local
varieties favored by small farmers could compromise the
natural sustainability of these races. Traits important to
indigenous farmers are resistance to drought, food or fodder
quality, competitive ability, performance on intercrops,
storage quality, taste or cooking properties, compatibility
with household labor conditions, etc; whereas transgenic
qualities such as herbicide resistance are not important to
farmers [11].

Agroecology versus ecoagriculture

***************************


The ECOAG proposal of “greening” the green revolution will
not be enough if the root causes of poverty and inequity are
not confronted head-on; tensions between socially equitable
development and ecologically sound conservation are bound to
accentuate. Organic farming systems that do not challenge
monocultural plantations and rely on foreign and expensive
certification seals, IPM systems that only reduce
insecticide use while leaving the rest of the agrochemical
package untouched, or fair-trade coffee systems destined
only for export, may in some cases benefit biodiversity, but
in general offer very little to small farmers. Fine-tuning
input use does little to move farmers towards the productive
redesign of agroecosystems, keeping them dependent on an
input substitution approach. Niche markets for the rich in
the North, in addition to exhibiting the same problems of
any export scheme, create stratification within rural
communities as only a few members can capture the benefits
from the limited markets of gourmet products for the
northern elite.

Deep differences on the above issues define the divide
between Agroecology (a truly pro-poor farmers science) and
Ecoagriculture. For agroecologists, environmentalists should
no longer ignore issues relating to land distribution,
indigenous peoples and farmers rights, nor the impacts of
globalization on food security, and of biotechnology on
traditional agriculture. It is crucial to transcend the
Malthusian view that blames the poor for environmental
degradation. In fact their impact on nature is low compared
to the damaging effects of the economic activities of large
landowners, mining and timber companies. Social processes
such as poverty and inequity in the distribution of land and
other resources push the poor to become agents of
environmental transformation, and as long as such processes
are not addressed, prospects of an ecoagriculture approach
are limited. It is also important for ecoagriculturalists to
understand and respect the fact that values of indigenous
people may be different from the global conservation
community, although species and habitats valued by local
people have global significance. Much of the concern for the
global community is the alarming loss of biodiversity and
associated environmental services; while for local
communities such issues may also be important, their real
concerns, needs and perceptions usually remain hidden to
outsiders who, despite their good intentions , can at time
embrace a sort of eco-imperialist perception of
conservation.

The agroecological approach to conservation

**********************************

A key challenge for agroecologists is to translate general
ecological principles and natural resource management
concepts into practical advice directly relevant to the
needs and circumstances of smallholders. The strategy must
be applicable under the highly heterogeneous and diverse
conditions in which smallholders live, it must be
environmentally sustainable and based on the use of local
resources and indigenous knowledge. Emphasis should be
placed on improving whole farming systems at the field or
watershed level rather than the yield of specific
commodities.

The enhancement of biodiversity at the heart of the
agroecology strategy is the idea that agroecosystems should
mimic the biodiversity levels and functioning of local
ecosystems. Like their natural models, such systems can be
productive, pest resistant and conservative of nutrients.
Agroecology uses biodiversity to enhance agroecosystem
function, allowing farms to develop the ir own soil
fertility, plant health and sustained yields, therefore
eliminating completely the need for external agrochemical
inputs or transgenic technologies. As a result of the
biodiverse designs and absence of toxic chemicals, non-
functional biodiversity - wildlife species of interest to
EACOAG - thrive in such systems.

Thus, in agroecological systems, conservation is a product
of the assemblage of productive agroecosystems rich in
functional biodiversity - the collection of organisms that
play key ecological roles - and not as in ECOAG, the result
of deliberate attempts to improve wildlife habitat within
agricultural areas. Wildlife rich, but functionally
biodiverse poor systems do not necessarily meet the needs of
small farmers for food diversity, productive self-
sufficiency, low inputs, etc.

The benefits of agroecological integrated farming systems
extend beyond conserving biodiversity as they produce far
more per unit area than do monocultures. Though the yield
per unit area of one crop - maize, for example - may be
lower on a small farm than on a large monoculture farm, the
total production per unit area, often composed of more than
a dozen crops, trees and various animal products, can be far
higher. In most multiple cropping systems developed by
smallholders, productivity in terms of harvestable products
per unit area is higher than under sole cropping with the
same level of management. Yield advantages can range from 20
to 60%, due to reduction of pest incidence and more
efficient use of nutrients, water and solar radiation. And
all this happens while conserving native crop genetic
resources and overall biodiversity. It is not a matter of
romanticizing traditional agriculture or to consider
development per se as detrimental, but if the interest lies
in “improving” local agriculture, researchers must first
understand and build on that agriculture that is to be
changed, rather than simply replace it. It is important to
highlight the role of traditional agriculture as a source of
agrobiodiversity and regenerative farming techniques, which
constitute the very foundation of any sustainable rural
development strategy directed at resource-poor farmers.
Moreover diverse agricultural systems that confer high
levels of tolerance to changing socio-economic and
environmental conditions are extremely valuable to poor
farmers, as diverse systems buffer against natural or human-
induced variations in production conditions.

A case study: harmonizing biodiversity conservation and
cacao production

The main goal of this project was congruent with ECOAG
goals: to improve the sustainable production of cacao while
conserving biodiversity in small organic cacao farms managed
by indigenous peoples in Talamanca, Costa Rica. The
project's main strategy was to find ways of simultaneously
enhancing cacao production in a sustainable manner while
conserving biodiversity. The focus on cacao is justified by
the fact that in addition to being culturally and
economically important to local indigenous groups of the
area, it is well known that highly diverse and multistrata
cacao agroforestry systems (CAFS) support higher levels of
biological diversity than most tropical crops [12]. A major
problem is that the permanence of these systems is
threatened by low yields and low prices of cacao. By
improving the productivity of cacao, the project aims to
increase the farmers' income without shifting to other less
biodiversity conserving crops such as banana [13].

After training a number of local farmers to monitor CAFS,
researchers confirmed that CAFS harbour significant
biodiversity, including 55 families, 132 genera and 185
species of plants, as well as insects, birds (190), bats
(36) and various mammals, some of which seem to be
declining. Biodiversity is highest in the more rustic tree
diverse and multistrata systems (about 55-60% shade cover)
and lowest in CAFS with simple strata (maximum two shade
tree species with 35-40 % shade).

Researchers at the Centro Agronomico Tropical de
Investigacion y Ensenanza (CATIE) proposed a number of
interventions aimed at improving cacao production: pruning,
introduction of clones, enrichment with fruit trees, shade
management, etc, while at the same time preserving
biodiversity. After three years of project interventions
there was no evidence that newly designed CAFS conserved or
enhanced biodiversity. Apparently, biodiversity declines as
plant diversity and structural complexity of CAFS decreases,
although lower diversity in CAFS may be more desirable from
an agronomic point of view. Productivity in rustic systems
is lower than in the less diverse CAFS, suggesting a
negative relationship between conservation and production
and presenting a major challenge to researchers and managers
because as CAFS are renewed or intervened to enhance
production (especially through pruning, elimination of shade
trees and genetic homogenization with clones), biodiversity
levels apparently may be sacrificed. When replacing existing
trees with new timber or fruit species or reducing shade
through pruning or thinning, it is important to consider
that such practices can reduce habitat complexity for
wildlife. Likewise enrichment with forest or fruit trees may
compete with existing cacao trees, and some trees may be
sources of insect pests or diseases.

By only focusing on production enhancement and wildlife
diversity, researchers failed to consider in their surveys a
key relationship in peasant agriculture: the relationship
between farm size, diversity levels and productivity.
Smaller farms (<1 ha) were more biodiverse and also seemed
more productive than larger ones, indicating that given
labor and cash constraints there may be an optimal size for
efficient production (in terms of labor allocation and
returns per unit of labor).

In situations like this, agroecologists would recommend
harmonizing conservation and production in farms over 1 ha
in size, by enhance production (pruning, grafting, etc) in a
small optimal area of each farm (0.5-0.7 has), leaving the
rest of the area under low input management, with high
levels of plant diversity and multistrata designs for
conserving existing biodiversity. In a well-managed 0.5 ha
farm, farmers may be able to obtain higher productivity per
unit of labour than in a badly managed 1- 1. 5 ha. In this
way a mixed strategy featuring intensification of production
and conservation enhancement may be reached.

As farmers become aware of biodiversity components it would
be useful that they also are able to distinguish among the
various types and functional groups of biodiversity and the
roles they play in the CAFS:

1. ecologically functional groups that mediate important
processes such as biological control, pollination or organic
matter decomposition;

2. conservation functional groups that protect soil and
water;

3. livelihood functional groups that produce timber, fruit,
cash, etc and

4. destructive biota that reduces production and other
processes.

5. Non functional biodiversity (wildlife species, etc)



Thus, farmers may be able to target specific biodiversity
groups according to the functions they want to emphasize to
maintain healthy and productive CAFS. The question that
remains what mechanisms are in place to compensate farmers
for the environmental services of interest to ECOAG
advocates (non functional biodiversity)? Many farmers maybe
trained to monitor biodiversity, and although they would
appreciate this new knowledge and skills which help to raise
conservation consciousness in the communities, most farmers
would doubt whether non-functional biodiversity conservation
would bring them direct economic benefits

Finally, an approach directed at increasing cacao production
while conserving biodiversity must transcend the cacao farm
to the total farming system. Most farms in the hillside
areas have an average size of 42 ha whereas cacao occupies
about 1.6 ha, the rest devoted to forest, fallow, pasture
and annual crops. In such areas, farm designs should be
directed at maintaining or enriching the surrounding
environment conducive to biodiversity conservation (forest
patches, etc), enhance food security (re- introducing the
practice of growing beans, rice, corn, cassava, etc), and
promoting other productive activities to generate income
(honey, fish, wood for crafts, medicinal plants, etc),
including ecotourism but under local control. Farm designs
should promote integration among sub systems so that outputs
from one subsystem become inputs into the other, creating
efficient bio-resource flows, as well as synergisms that may
aid in sponsoring the soil fertility, plant protection and
productivity of cacao and the other crops of the total farm.

Spreading the agroecological approach

In order for agroecological approaches that lead to food
security and biodivesrity conservation to spread, major
changes must be made in policies, institutions, and research
and development to make sure that agroecological
interventions truly benefit small farmers by giving them
access to land and other resources, equitable markets and
alternative technologies; and more importantly, empowering
them to become actors in their own development. It is clear
that macro economic reform and sectoral policies promoted by
trade liberalization have not generated a supportive
environment for small and poor farmers. In most cases,
agricultural growth was concentrated in the commercial
sector and did not trickle down. Trade liberalization
reduced protection at a time when commodity prices were at
historic lows, leaving small farmers incapable of competing
in domestic markets. The drop in price of many crops and the
lack of credit as well as long distance from markets are all
factors that have led to increased pauperization of the
small farm sector. Moreover, government programs and
subsidies have concentrated on medium and large commercial
farmers and small farmers have remained limited in their
access to services, infrastructure and markets. Such
negative trends must be halted so that they do not continue
drastically affecting the viability of peasant and family
agriculture

Despite the current anti-peasant trends, the evidence shows
that sustainable agricultural systems can be economically,
environmentally and socially viable, and contribute
positively to local livelihoods as well as conservation of
biodiversity [14]. But without appropriate policy support,
they are likely to remain localized in extent. Necessary
changes include land reform, protection of prices for food
crops, appropriate and equitable market opportunities, and
equitable partnerships between local governments, NGOs and
farmers replacing top-down transfer of technology models
with participatory technology development and farmer to
farmer research and extension.

There is no question that small farmers located in
biodiversity hotspots throughout the developing world can
produce much of their needed food in ways that are
compatible with conservation goals. The evidence is
conclusive: new approaches and technologies spearheaded by
farmers, NGOs and some local governments around the world
are already making a sufficient contribution to food
security at the household, national, and regional levels. A
variety of agroecological and participatory approaches in
many countries show production increases through
diversification, improving diets and income, contributing to
national food security and even to exports and also to
conservation of the natural resource base including
biodiversity [15].

Feeding a growing world population without further
endangering the natural environment depends upon public
support of sustainable agriculture research, education and
extension. Alternatives to both chemical-intensive, high-
yield agriculture and to land extensive sustainable
agriculture can be expected to result from participatory
scientific endeavors dedicated to their discovery and
development. Only a fraction of the billions of agricultural
research dollars spent over the last fifty years has been
devoted to increasing the productivity of sustainable and/or
organic production systems. It is time to bet on a truly
agroecological approach.



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  • [Livingontheland] Corporate Hijack of Sustainable Agriculture, Tradingpost, 11/17/2004

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